Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Two for Crab Lake
by VoyageurNorth

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 09/17/2005
Entry & Exit Point: Crab Lake and Cummings from Burntside Lake (EP 4)
Number of Days: 5
Group Size: 2
Day 4 of 5
Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Next morning we got up to some strong winds coming from the northwest. We broke camp and proceeded to paddle back to the other end of Cummings. The wind channeled down the lake causing the waves and whitecaps to increase in size. We held to the south shore a bit too much and got behind one of the longer peninsulas.

We figured out where we had gone wrong and headed back into the wind. That was hard but not as tough as trying to cut across the waves at the angle we had to take to get to the southeast end of Cummings. We were blown into a shoreline littered with large boulders of all different sizes and shapes.

Getting back out into the lake looked pretty dangerous, so we opted to bushwhack though a short area to get to the southern channel. It looked a lot easier than it turned out to be. After each of us took a pack and headed over. After a few stumbles and climbing over lots of downed trees, 45 minutes later we finally came out on the next side. We headed back down the rock strewn shoreline to get the canoe & the last pack. The shoreline, though pretty treacherous footing, now looked more inviting than the woods! We traveled the shoreline, sometimes walking just on the edge of the woods.

A bit later we took another look at the waves and figured we could make the turn from that point. It is amazing how a bit of difference in the wave direction and a little less wind made the paddling much easier. A short paddle and we were over near the beaver lodge where we had left the other two packs.

It should have taken us only 4 leisurely hours to get back to Crab, but it ended up taking almost 6 hours. We took the Korb & Little Crab creeks, hoping to see moose again, but there weren’t any to be seen that day.

We planned to camp on the northwestern finger of Crab near the portage into Saca Lake. We arrived there with just a bit of daylight to spare. We set up camp quickly and proceeded to make dinner. Our dinner consisted of some tasty Cache Lake wild rice salad, Cache Lake Italian frying pan bread and the last of the fresh veggies.